S.D. scientist finds sea turtles in strange places

Hawksbill turtles were thought to be wiped out in the eastern Pacific Ocean until a recent series of discoveries. Here, a tagged hawksbill makes it way to the water in Machalilla National Park, Ecuador.
— Andres Baquero

Hawksbill turtles were thought to be wiped out in the eastern Pacific Ocean until a recent series of discoveries. Here, a tagged hawksbill makes it way to the water in Machalilla National Park, Ecuador.
/ Andres Baquero

What started as a road trip for a San Diego State graduate student has turned into an international campaign to revive a population of sea turtles thought to be wiped out of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

A few months of research in Baja California proved that hawksbill turtles hadn’t disappeared. Instead, over the eons, a remnant group has traded the open ocean for the muddy mangrove estuaries of Central and South America.

The discovery provides a dramatic example of biological adaptation and offers hope for the turtles — if pivotal wetlands can be protected from development and poachers.

“We pinch ourselves all the time,” said Alexander Gaos, a doctoral student in a joint ecology program at SDSU and the University of California Davis. “Only three years ago people thought they were gone, and now look at us.”

Gaos, 34, runs the multinational Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative and has co-written a chapter in a forthcoming book about sea turtles with his wife and fellow conservationist, Ingrid Yañez. He has gained the admiration of pioneering scientists such as Jeffrey Seminoff, an international authority on sea turtles at the National Marine Fisheries Service in La Jolla.

“In my 24 years working with turtles, I have to say that this hawksbill stuff is the most exciting journey of discovery,” Seminoff said. “It went from a situation where they were written off to one where … there is a viable opportunity to try and recover them.”

Hawksbills are among the large turtles that ply the world’s oceans; they can migrate for thousands of miles. The prehistoric-looking creatures can grow to 200 pounds, and they are distinctive for beakish mouths that allow them to reach into coral reefs for food.

They’ve been killed for their striking shells, which are turned into combs, rings and other curios. Like other sea turtles, hawksbills and their eggs are a valuable food source for seaside villagers.

People from El Maculis, El Salvador, follow a tagged hawksbill turtle to the water. Conservationists say without community support, the hawksbills are likely to disappear.— Ingrid Yañez

People from El Maculis, El Salvador, follow a tagged hawksbill turtle to the water. Conservationists say without community support, the hawksbills are likely to disappear.
/ Ingrid Yañez

The combined effect was such that Conservation International recently listed the eastern Pacific hawksbill as one of the world’s most endangered turtles despite the recent mangrove findings. They were largely deemed unrecoverable in the region — until Gaos and Yañez went looking for adventure.

In 2007, they left their jobs with a turtle conservation program in Costa Rica and set out in search of hawksbills. What struck them was how leatherbacks had become the face of turtle conservation campaigns even though hawksbills were just as bad off and maybe worse.

They scanned the scientific literature, which barely mentioned hawksbills in eastern Pacific even though are they faring well elsewhere. A report by Seminoff did say there were turtles in the Gulf of California.

Gaos cobbled together a few thousand dollars for a Ford F-150. Yañez — about six months pregnant — joined him for a tour that started in Cabo San Lucas and covered 1,500 miles.

Along the way, they stopped in fishing towns and asked about hawksbills. After their child was born, the couple returned to the spots in Baja where word-of-mouth suggested they would find the rare creatures. After a couple months of diving and netting, they recorded 10 juvenile hawksbills with photos, tissue samples and measurements.